


1339 Brimstone Avenue

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Apocalypse, Demons, Fantasy, In Vino Veritas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22469935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: There's nothing greater than the pride that comes with home-ownership.
Relationships: Lee Minho | Lee Know/Yang Jeongin | I.N
Comments: 17
Kudos: 59





	1339 Brimstone Avenue

The world was ending.

Hell hath frozen over.

Whatever was going wrong Up There had completely fucked up how things were going Down Here.

Jeongin sat on his front porch. His house was a cute, brightly-painted one story. A two bedroom two bath. It had a separate office space. A screened-in back porch. Decent amount of counter space in the kitchen. An attic! It was an absolute steal considering the location. He rocked back and forth in his chair, ankles propped up on the white wooden railing, and watched as the apocalypse dragged itself claw over hoof towards him. 

He could see it. The end of all things. He could see it. Coming closer. Decimating everything. Where there was supposed to be lava, there was now ice. Where there was supposed to be billowing clouds of suffocating black ash eternally falling from the sky, there was now pure white snow snuffing out everything.

Jeongin recalled that one famous Robert Frost poem. No. No. Not The Road Not Taken. The other one. The one about the apocalypse. He mumbled what little bit of it he knew off by heart:

> _To say that for destruction ice_
> 
> _Is also great_
> 
> _And would suffice._

The words hung in the air. His breath left his mouth in the faintest little fog. It was getting cooler. Colder than he'd ever experienced.

Jeongin hated it. Hated what his home was being reduced to. Hated that it was all vanishing. Hell used to be _so great_. 

He got used to the blackened sky. Every big city had its pollution problems. Even the screams of the eternally damned faded to background noise after a couple centuries of all the racket keeping him up at night. Oh, he used to get so angry! He’d rise out of bed, storm out of his house and stomp all the way down to the next lowest level of Hell to yell at the tortured human souls to _shut up_! Sometimes they did. Most of the time they couldn’t hear him over their own agony.

Filing a complaint with the landlord hadn’t changed much. She only suggested that he adopt a hellhound so that its manic barking would help drown out the higher-pitched screams.

“Hey neighbor,” came a voice, startling him out of his thoughts.

Jeongin blinked. He’d been staring intently at the way the distant city skyscrapers were fading into white as the snow thickened. Now he was looking at destruction that wasn’t so far away. His neighbor stood at the bottom of his porch stairs. “Hey Minho,” Jeongin called out, smile on his face.

Minho was one pretty demon. Hair as black as coal. Fierce eyes. Like embers. Towering black horns that curled out of the greenish skin of his forehead. The worst part about his attractiveness was that he lived next door and, thus, Jeongin had to see him every day. Every day for the past... how long had it been? Four months? In Minho's long-fingered claws, he held two bottles of seductively red wine. “Figured you could use some company while you watched everything go up in flames. Err, up in ice.” 

Minho invited himself up the stairs. 

Though the temperature of the evening was dropping, Minho was still devilishly hot. In the literal, flaming way. With each step, he left a blackened pile of soot where his feet had been. His scaly tail swished back and forth to keep him balanced as he strolled up the steps and crossed the porch towards the one remaining chair. “Didn’t think to bring cups but who cares about decorum, right? Not on a night like this.”

Jeongin smiled wider. His lips drew back away from the three rows of sharp white fangs that sat in his mouth. “Thought I told you a hundred million times that I prefer my wine white?”

Minho sank down into the rocking chair next to Jeongin's. He had to do a bit of maneuvering to get comfortable, to slide the chair sideways enough so that he too could prop his ankles up on the railing and watch the ice and snow choke the life from their world. It was happening so slowly. Too slowly. Why couldn't the apocalypse just get on with it? “Well, the grocery store up the road was having a sale…” Minho let his story trail off into silence. He just drove one long claw into the cork that stopped up one of the wine bottles and then pulled it free with a loud _pop_. He then passed the entire bottle to Jeongin. "And you know I can't pass up a good buy one get one deal."

"The joys of late capitalism." Jeongin took the offered wine. The label was finely designed and featured a name three syllables too long to be a word Jeongin could read. First, he sniffed the small, open mouth of the bottle. With a long, deep inhale through his nose, he sucked up the wine’s aroma. Hmmmm. Dark. Juicy. Quite a bit on the sour side. Satisfied, he parted his lips and let his long, light blue tongue slip down the neck of the bottle to the contents within. It tasted about as good as smelled. Sharp. Tangy. Like he could still taste the fields the grapes grew in. “I guess it’s passable,” he muttered, slurping his tongue back into his mouth.

In the seconds he’d been sniffing and taste-testing, Minho had already popped open the remaining wine bottle and taken a hearty swig or two. “I’m a little upset, you know? The real estate agent said that this level of Hell was going to be redeveloped soon. That the property values would soar! If things had stayed normal a little while longer, I could have been rich. Loaded, I tell you.”

Jeongin took a tentative sip of his wine, straight from the bottle. He had to grip it with both hands because the bottle was so wide-bottomed and heavy.

A tiny green flame sparked between Minho’s fingers as he stretched.

First Star, he was _beautiful_ , Jeongin noticed. The same kind of beauty as an exploding star. As a crashing meteorite. As a towering tidal wave primed to wipe out the entire population of the Earth. Primal and disastrous and wondrous. No wonder Minho had a job tempting humans into irreversible, one-sided pacts, making the silly things sign away their souls. If Jeongin were a little more susceptible to temptation, he’d offer up his own soul to Minho as well. Squiggle his name on the dotted line in a heartbeat. Jeongin realized he was staring and attempted to save face by continuing the conversation. “Don’t you make enough money to buy a nice, big house? Why’d you move to a neighborhood like this?” Like this. As in a little... poor.

Beyond Jeongin’s front porch, the street was noisy. Full of movement and screaming and chaos. Not just of the enslaved mortal souls bellowing for redemption even in these last moments but the half-crazed screams of other demons as well. 

Winged demons. Horned demons. 

Big ones and small ones. The mob of limbs and wings ran through the streets in a panic, clutching their possessions, fruitlessly attempting to escape the end of all things sweeping ever closer.

Minho took another slow swig of his wine, not caring that some of the blood red liquid dribbled down his pointed chin. When he finished, he tipped the bottle away from his mouth and licked his plump lips with his yellow, forked tongue. “I wanted to make a long-term investment. Plus, the closet space is to die for,” he answered. Then he chuckled like it was all a joke. It kind of was. “They keep making the lower levels of Hell nicer and nicer. People _want_ to be damned. But now everything’s overcrowded. Traffic's gotten so bad. Can’t go five feet without passing some poor, unfortunate human soul on the street, begging for the punishment to end.” He took another swig. 

Jeongin could see the softness in Minho’s eyes. Like his gaze was liquid. It most certainly wasn’t his first taste of wine tonight.

Minho continued, “Humans don’t have the will to redeem themselves like they used to. In the past, they would have fought for it. Some would have managed to reincarnate. Nowadays, they just lay down and take what’s coming. But... I'm starting to appreciate that. Have you ever tasted complete and utter hopelessness? It’s _so_ good.”

Jeongin sighed. He didn't want to remind Minho that 'taking what's coming' was exactly what the two of them were doing now. Instead, he focused on rocking himself back and forth in his wooden chair. Both chairs were part of a matching set. Hand-me-downs from his mother. They were good chairs! Solid and stable. Didn't creak. If he ever had the chance to have children, he'd hand the chairs down to them. After taking a short, sweet sip of his wine, he muttered, “You keep forgetting that I’m not a pain demon. I can't taste despair.”

"Ahhh, I see." Minho physically thrived on human torment. That’s why he did so well in his line of work; luring and tempting and changing and betraying. Lifting and lifting and lifting, then yanking everything out from underneath. It was so easy for him to get the emotions out of humans that he craved. “It’s a force of habit, you know. Everyone I work with--” He paused as a fight broke out in the street in front of them. Two large demons hammered their fists into each others faces. For no other reason than just because. “Everyone I _worked_ with is just like me.”

The house across the street was on fire. Not the natural kind of hellfire but the fire someone set. The kind of fire someone created on purpose. You could tell by the smell.

“What’s your line of work again,” Minho questioned. "Sorry for always forgetting."

Jeongin almost felt embarrassed to say it.

Minho was so high-level. So fierce and ferocious. Assigned to something so integral to demon society.

“I’m a soulcial worker,” Jeongin replied when he’d dragged the silence on for long enough. “I go out to the Gardens and help the unfortunate ones there.”

Not a garden of flowers and trees but a Garden of souls. Just fields and fields and fields of them. That's how many newly damned there were. The Gardens were up a few levels of Hell, closer to the surface where the weather was better. Where the recently damned awaited reassignment based on how heinous and hedonistic of a life they lived on Earth. 

Minho hummed. “A demon’s gotta do what a demon’s gotta do.”

It was a silly assignment, Jeongin had always thought. Monotonous. With long hours and hardly enough pay. One of those jobs that could probably be machine automated with today's technology. Just day after day of reading off crimes, stamping papers, organizing things in file cabinets, ushering fresh souls onto buses so they’d be transported to the appropriate level of Hell and begin their eternity of damnation and punishment. “It’s a boring job,” he huffed. His tongue was damp with wine. His mind was just beginning to soften and blur with drunkenness. First Star, he was such a lightweight. “Like, I wish I actually got to carry on punishments. I don’t have to do too much to the Souls themselves. Just them _being here_ is torment.”

“Which I never understood,” Minho cut in, his words warm and slurred. “This place is nice.” He waved a hand beyond the front porch.

And it could be beautiful, Jeongin had to agree. Hell had its moments. The architecture was just really nice out here. Intricate and detailed with centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries of history in every stone. Some of the larger rivers reeked of sulfur, but you got used to it. Even the mountains could be pretty, when the light of the flames hit them right. Turned them a little gold.

But now Jeongin couldn’t even see the mountains. The snow and ice and frigid winds had hidden everything beneath a blanket of impossible white. And it was all getting closer. It was all ending. It was probably the one good thing about living so far from the city center. It gave him that much more time to sit and think and watch everything fall apart. Location location location, the real estate agent had chanted when she'd showed him the house. He was thankful that he went with her advice. He'd be a goner by now if he'd went with the downtown loft he always dreamed of.

Jeongin shivered.

The wine put comfortable embers in his belly but it couldn’t keep the cold out for long.

This was really it, wasn’t it? If only Jeongin had a few more years here, he could have had his mortgage paid off. He could have _owned_ this house. For real.

Minho pressed a clawed hand across his mouth and burped. A low, thunderous rumble that made them both giggle.

Jeongin dropped his ankles from up on the railing and stood up. He’d been sitting for too long. His legs were stiff. His tail was all tingly from the lack of circulation. He’d lost the majority of the feeling in his wings. He whimpered from the mild pain of it before propping himself up against the railing. "You've been a great neighbor, Minho."

"You, too." Minho said. "I mean... No raging weeknight parties. You keep your lawn nice and tidy. You don't let your hellhound shit in my yard. You're a good one, Jeongin. Better than I could have asked for. I still have that door stopper you gifted me for housewarming." The destruction was close enough now that snow was beginning to fall on the roofs of the homes a block away. The wind picked up. Its touch was frigid.

The fire across the street still raged. No one cared about putting it out. Everything was going to end soon anyway.

Even the fight in the street had ended. Both demons sprawled across the asphalt. Neither of them moving much. 

Jeongin felt numb inside. And not just because he was a hunger demon.

He had spent the majority of his day getting all of his affairs in order. Cleaning up his house, tossing out what he didn’t need. It wouldn’t matter, common sense told him. Not really. Anything he did today wouldn't matter. But just in case it did, just in case there was a chance this wasn’t truly the end, he wanted to wake up to a spotless house in the morning. He’d also cancelled a few subscription services he wasn’t getting his money's worth out of. Paid up on his bills. Applied for a promotion at work. (Had the building still been standing when he'd sent the email?) Went down to the marketplace with all of the pretty canals and brightly-painted gondolas so he could stock his fridge with 'organic' produce. Start eating healthy. He'd even called up Changbin and Jisung and told them ‘Fuck you’ and ‘It's been real’ respectively.

Now there was nothing. Nothing for him to do.

Nothing but the cold permanence of the end of all things.

Nothing but this expensive bottle of red wine and Minho's comfortable company.

“You wanna know something neat,” Minho asked. He was clearly plastered. His words nearly nonsensically slurred together. “I’ve always wanted to ask you out. Like, on a date. You know what I mean?”

The cold crept closer and closer. Jeongin could barely see the house across the street as the ice swallowed everything whole. As the snow fell and covered everything it touched in never-melt white. Jeongin wanted to hold out just a little while longer. Keep the cold out for just a few more seconds. He downed a swallow of wine. Felt it burn and tingle in his throat. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

“Is it too late to tell you that,” Minho asked.

Jeongin didn’t want to look at him. It was too late for a lot of things. Too late to say a lot of the things he wanted to say. Do nearly anything he wanted to do. “It’s never too late.”

“Good.” Minho was suddenly standing next to him. “Because I’m asking you out on a date, Jeongin. A date right here at the end of the world.”

The cold crept up the porch steps.

Blanketed Jeongin’s house.

Crept into his wings, into his claws, into his bones, into his blood. The cold crept into his heart and _sat there_. It would not leave. It would never leave. An uninvited house guest overstaying their welcome.

“Good,” Jeongin repeated the sentiment. “Because there’s no one on any level of Hell who I’d rather go out like this with.”

Out on a date.

Out at the end of the world.

Out.

“Good,” Minho purred. He knocked the wine bottle from Jeongin’s hand. It cracked wide open on the porch. Spilled its contents everywhere.

It didn’t matter.

Everything was ending. It would only be a few seconds now. They just had to be patient.

Minho put his hand in Jeongin’s and squeezed. Hard. Tight.

It was the last bit of warmth Jeongin felt before Hell finished its freezing.

And that was the end of it.


End file.
